Traffic nightmare on horizon?

Every day around 5 p.m., thousands of workers pour out of Pease International Tradeport and clog the Spaulding Turnpike with lines of cars that stretch over the horizon.

Joey Cresta

Every day around 5 p.m., thousands of workers pour out of Pease International Tradeport and clog the Spaulding Turnpike with lines of cars that stretch over the horizon.

According to the Tenants Association at Pease, 250 companies employ more than 7,000 people at the tradeport. Bill Lambert, state traffic engineer with the N.H. Department of Transportation, said that highways are designed with a capacity of 1,800 cars per lane, per hour.

When the workday ends for the bulk of Pease workers and the many others who work on the Seacoast but live farther north, something has to give. Thus, the sitting, the honking, the crawling at a snail's pace that is a daily reality for commuters who have to endure the bottleneck south of the Little Bay Bridges in Newington.

The expected two- to four-week closure of the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge carrying the Route 1 Bypass from Portsmouth to Kittery, Maine, has some worried about a new traffic nightmare on the Interstate 95 bridge. With Memorial Bridge still months from completion, the Piscataqua River Bridge is now the only direct route from Portsmouth to Kittery.

Data shows 86,000 cars travel the I-95 bridge daily, but that number jumps as high as 112,000 in the summer. On average, 14,000 cars travel over the Long Bridge daily. Officials have said the I-95 bridge should have the capacity to handle the additional interstate travel, but the issue puts one more strain on a transportation system already showing signs of inadequacy.

Dave Walker, transportation program manager with the Rockingham Planning Commission, said bottlenecks that occur when a route suddenly reduces in lanes are one of the "deficiencies" in road infrastructure that exacerbate traffic connections. His department monitors trouble spots for long-range transportation planning.

Walker said the difficulty of planning for transportation projects is securing the funding to follow through on the plans. He said the state gets somewhere in the area of $150 million annually from the federal government for transportation improvement. That money has to be shared around the state for large-scale projects, with a small portion reserved for interstate maintenance, he said.

Rockingham Planning Commission's eyes are already set on the next round of potential projects. Walker said there is a bottleneck on Route 1 in the center of Hampton Falls that causes traffic backups all the way to Seabrook and the Route 101 interchange in Hampton. That corridor has been studied, and the commission is awaiting the project's placement on the state's 10-year plan, he said.

"In recent years, it's been very tough to get new projects added, simply because we already have a number of large projects in the queue," he said.

He pointed to a number of recent projects he said have already had and will continue to have an impact in the region. Implementation of the high-speed toll lanes at the Hampton toll plaza reduced the regular weekend backups on I-95; the rebuilding of I-93 from Salem to Manchester is inching closer to completion; and work is ongoing to widen Spaulding Turnpike between Newington and Dover, including the Little Bay Bridges.

Beyond the everyday back-ups caused by commuters and tourists in the summer months, there are the unexpected incidents that can also lead to gridlock. Car accidents are the main culprit, but even something as simple as a car in the breakdown lane with a flat tire can slow down the rest of the vehicles on the road.

That is where the departments of transportation for New Hampshire and Maine are trying to take a proactive approach. They described diverse efforts, including using electronic road signs, radio advisories and tracking traffic conditions to keep drivers aware of what's coming down the road.

"Part of that is keeping motorists informed of changing situations using that multi-pronged approach and finding ways to respond to incidents more quickly," said Ed Hanscom, head of the Maine DOT's Transportation System Planning Bureau.

Lambert, of the NHDOT, said the state's transportation management center in Concord collects real-time traffic data using Bluetooth and global positioning technologies. That center shares space with state police dispatchers, providing a swifter state police response alongside the ability to send out messages via electronic boards and social media like Facebook and Twitter.

The NHDOT also has found success with its roadside service patrols, which seek out disabled motorists to help them quickly change a flat tire or get enough gas in the tank to get moving again.

"The quicker you can clear those incidents and roadside events, the quicker traffic gets back to normal conditions," Lambert said.

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